


Little Pieces of Time

by NoHolds



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Major character death - Freeform, Very very very loosely implied pricefield
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-17
Updated: 2015-09-17
Packaged: 2018-04-21 07:10:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4819934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoHolds/pseuds/NoHolds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A lot about Arcadia Bay has changed since you left.<br/>For example,<br/>When you left, The Prescotts were just a rich family with a lot of land. Now, they have spread their influence through the town like a disease. Something slow and malicious, something infectious. They have tainted everything they touch, and it has not touched them back.<br/>They are a family of Typhoid Marys.</p><p>(Or, Arcadia Bay has changed, and Max hasn't, really, and when something horrible happens she's left dealing with the fallout)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little Pieces of Time

A lot about Arcadia Bay has changed since you left.

For example,

When you left, The Prescotts were just a rich family with a lot of land. Now, they have spread their influence through the town like a disease, something slow and malicious, something infectious. They have tainted everything they touch, and it has not touched them back.

They are a family of Typhoid Marys.

You sleep in your room in the Prescott Dormitories and feel your lungs tighten, feel the first symptoms creep under your skin.

Chloe Price is different, too. She had been quiet when you left, grieving, but now-

Now she is grieving, still, but her grief is a twisted, vicious thing, all spit and whiskey-burn, now her grief is armed and dangerous.

Your childhood haunts- they remain, but faded, overgrown, rotting. You think your friendship with Chloe has rotted, too, a little. Turned sour like the whole of Arcadia bay, under the weight of time and selfishness (there's something else that's different about your friendship, too, something that feels like butterflies, a tension separate from the fighting, but you think you aren't ready for that yet, and you think Chloe isn't either).

You, though- you are the same.

Your name is Maxine Caulfield, and you are the same. Taller, sure, and the baby fat has melted from your cheeks, and you've gotten drunk a couple times, and you've aged a few years, but-

But you are bumbling and awkward and you have not _seen_ what other people have seen, have not grown like they have (and even if Chloe's growth is something red and sore, like skin healed over gravel, like an ingrown hair, at least she's _changed._ You have not changed, not in all these years).

You are the same as you have always been, and you are standing on Chloe's front porch and you are unsure of what to say (her front porch is different, too. Faded, peeling, with a sun catcher you don't remember and a new mailbox. If feels sometimes like the world is growing up without you).

You are raw and numb all at once, and you remember William's death years ago, remember not knowing what to say then, either. Remember standing on the front porch with marbles in your mouth, trying to talk to Chloe like nothing was different. (Of course it was different. The car crash that killed William changed everything except for you)

When you knock on the front door, Joyce answers, smiling brightly (you remember this smile, fond and motherly, like a blanket on a cold day. The smile is the same as ever).

“Maxine,” She says. “I heard you and Chloe went to quite the party last night.”

Then she catches the look in your eye, and her smile fades, and Joyce ushers you inside, sits you at her kitchen table.

(The table is stained, now, scratched. Even _it_ has changed. But you are still a fool with too many words and no way to get them out, still the bearer of bad news, still an ill omen).

“Max,” she says. “What's wrong?”

And so you tell her, as best you can. What happened in the junkyard. Why Chloe's not coming home. You do not cry. Your eyes itch and your throat burns but you think, maybe, it is still to fresh to cry over.

The Joyce that hears the news, the Joyce that hears her daughter is dead- she is not the Joyce you remember.

This woman is worn and weary, she is _so tired._ She is kindness under pressure, she is frown lines and gray hairs, she is coming apart at the seams, falling apart with dignity, without taking anyone with her.

This woman, who is so kind, she offers to make you tea as if you are the one hurt most by this news.

(You loved Chloe, that hadn't changed, but you weren't her mother. You lost a friend and not a daughter. You are not the one who needs to be taken care of).

You take the tea, though. Because you are hurt, and you are selfish, and this has not changed.

Joyce puts the kettle on, sits down at the table, opens her mouth as if to speak, and then she cries. A scary thing, always, to see an adult crying, she cries and shakes and clutches for you and cries, and cries. It is not a movie sort of crying. It is not delicate. Joyce cries like it is going out of style, nose running, gasping for air, she cries and cries and you don't know what to say.

You never have.

You leave for Seattle right after the funeral, taking your parents up on their offer to give you some time 'away from it all'.

There are too many memories in Arcadia Bay, too many well-wishers, too many bluebirds, too many young hopefuls. Too much to remind you of Chloe Price; this new, sharp-edged girl that you were just getting to know again when she was taken from you.

And you are not brave enough to face the reminders. Not brave enough to face Joyce at the Two Whales, you are a coward, and this has not changed, either.

You run home again, and Arcadia Bay rots in your rear-view.

Maybe, five years down the line, you will return, and see how the world has changed without you.

You are Maxine Caulfield, mourning friend, life-saver, time-traveller, and you have not yet deigned to grow up.

**Author's Note:**

> Anyway, I wondered about how poor Joyce would take Chloe getting shot at the end of ep. 4, and Max always seemed like she never grew up to me, and she IS named after Holden Caulfield, the ultimate eternal child, so I wrote this.


End file.
